Whitman

“We’re all capable of terrible acts, and we’re all capable of greatness. It’s a question of which angels we’re listening to, I suppose.”

On August 1, 1966, CHARLES WHITMAN climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower and started firing—and the rest, literally, is history. Here’s what happened on that fateful day, in the words of more than three dozen people who got shot, fired back, lost loved ones, saved lives by risking their own, and otherwise witnessed the nation’s first mass murder in a public place.